Add new comment

The appetite for change at COP18 was heard loudly and clearly in the many informal gatherings at the conference center. Coalitions, climate finance, and scientific agreement came from the dynamic debate in Doha. To follow up those conversations, deals and dreams, and actionable projects, I have initiated a study to address the longer-term global challenges that we will face together in the decade ahead. Collective Solutions 2025 will present a strategy for how multilateral development institutions can achieve sustainable development and inclusive green growth to boost prosperity and end poverty.

Many conversations in Doha centered on the findings in our report “Turn Down the Heat: Why a 4°C Warmer World Must be Avoided.” Without significant intervention we’re on track for a 4°C warmer world marked by extreme heat waves, declining global food stocks, loss of ecosystems and biodiversity, and life-threatening sea level rise. The global changes we face will have short and long term ramifications for our client countries. Avoiding the 4-degree world is vital.

There is a great deal that the World Bank Group and other multilateral and bilateral development agencies can do to help reduce the severity and pace of the adverse impacts of climate change, and help strengthen the benefits gained from global public goods. Collective Solutions 2025 in particular calls on young leaders to participate. We need your voices, it is your future that climate change impacts.

Over the last five years the World Bank Group and other development agencies have made disaster preparedness a major priority. Yet today, investment in disaster prevention is just 4%of the total spent on disaster relief. We must work with partners to shift the balance towards disaster preparedness so that we are better prepared for a world with increased climate change impact. To go further in combating these crises, Collective Solutions 2025 will study “global public bads” like air quality in urban centers, ocean acidification, and desertification. These “bads” affect people irrespective of where they are, or what caused them. These regional and global challenges divert scarce development finance into crisis response. They threaten the development gains made over the past two decades.

Increasingly, the challenge I see for the World Bank Group and other international organizations is how to achieve an appropriate balance between our client-focused development and crisis response initiatives and globally focused long-term initiatives to support the delivery of global public goods for sustainable development.

Collective Solutions 2025 will develop long-term scenarios, incorporate country and thematic case studies, and explore pathways as we transform into a solutions bank. We’ll be better able to help countries achieve inclusive green growth in a way that balances responses to immediate development priorities with attention to the longer term provision of critical regional and global public goods.

We need your voices in preparing Collective Solutions 2025. There are many questions to begin thinking about: the collective global action needed, navigating resource scarcity to end poverty, managing for an urban future, and the role of the World Bank Group in helping countries prepare for the decades ahead. We call upon you to challenge us on how we innovate to achieve inclusive green growth. Let’s all join in the conversation as Collective Solutions 2025 takes shape over the months ahead. We’ve introduced a collaboration platform, where you can answer the question: How can we achieve sustainable development to boost prosperity and end poverty?